Scarlett O'Hara in Hell
by roisaber
Summary: The Devil comes to collect on O'Hara's debt, but a not-so-friendly face intervenes. What will Scarlett decide when the only option is a choice between misery and pure evil?


[UPDATE #1]

While I treat canon as a guideline rather than a rule, it's been brought to my attention that Scarlett O'Hara wasn't directly a slave _owner, _and that seems like a plot point worth referencing. Of course, I've been acting on a hazy memory of a memory about canon at this point, thus the oversight. If anybody has an idea for establishing moral culpability without that oversight, I'd gladly retool it along those lines.

I've rated this T rather than M because I share a Continental attitude towards sex in media; that is, it makes no sense to me that violent themes are considered T appropriate, while sexual themes are not. Especially considering the median age range that people actually start engaging in sexual activity. Wouldn't most people rather have sex than get stabbed? At any rate, there's sexual themes ahead.

[UPDATE #2]

So anybody reading the reviews for this story can plainly see that I'm being threatened over its rating and content. I've decided - quite unusually for me - to capitulate, because I have a breadth of stories whose contents range from the totally benign to the intentionally, satirically over-the-top offensive, and I'd hate to see 250,000+ words worth of stories gone over with a fine toothed comb by someone looking for a reason to be offended.

The entire idea of rating fiction strikes me as crass and borderline censorship in, and of, itself. The actual Bible would be rated M if we went by the guidelines established on this site, yet it's an important piece of Western literature that should be read by all and sundry to get a better understanding of Western culture despite its blatantly violent and sexually deviant content. Fiction shouldn't be rated, and the human imagination isn't something that human beings need to be protected from. Nevertheless, I've put a lot of work into what I've published here over the past year and gotten a lot of good reviews, and I'd rather not have any more moral busybodies than absolutely necessary poring over my work and getting its dissemination disrupted.

[END AUTHOR UPDATES]

Scarlett O'Hara's head ached. Each beat of her heart put another squeeze of pressure on her abused cranium. Where the Hell was she? The air was hot, and it stank of smoke, humidity, and bayou muck. She was surrounded by the gaunt remains of blackened trees, and the dense fog was illuminated with a strange ochre light, shining from no apparent source. Scarlett shivered despite the oppressive heat.

"Hello?" she called out tentatively.

What in God's name was going on? She was started to find that her memory was nothing but a hazy patchwork of disconnected images. In her mind's eye, she saw scenes of this and that; slaves toiling under the hot sun while she tried on dresses in her bedroom; enemy soldiers quartering in her grand home; a taste of fear, hard work, and penury here and there. But Scarlett had no narrative that tied it all together. She remembered _facts_ about her life, but the _story_ of her life seemed to be obscured by the same ruddy fog that reduced her vision to a couple dozen feet. Damp threaded its way into her hair and clung to it in beads.

Heavy boots stomped on the muddy ground, and she heard laughter and musical instruments.

Out of the deep fog stepped the most extraordinary person she'd ever seen, and the most terrifying, too. A black man, six foot four if he was an inch, wearing an exquisitely tailored purple suit that defined the shape of his muscular torso like the sea defines the shape of the land. He carried a gold-tipped cane and he walked with the regal bearing of a European count. His skin was black as coal, but his face and hands were defined by white paint drawing the shape of a skull on his face. Scarlett shuddered at the ghoulish display.

What's more, the man was followed by a retinue of laughing, jiving, arguing negroes, all dressed as foppishly as the leader himself. One was playing a fiddle with such intensity that it could admit only a cacophonous screech of protest in lieu of a melody, and another was piping an improvised, high-octave tune on a reed flute. Their hats were as garish as their music. An exceedingly tall black man was _chugging_ liquor from a flask, tears streaming down his cheeks, and a short white woman wearing something that didn't even qualify as lingerie was jumping up and down and trying to appropriate the flask for herself. Before Scarlett could turn to flee, the leader stopped, and his entourage lowered their voices until they were merely a racket.

"Ms. O'Hara?" the leader asked.

Scarlett swallowed the lump in her throat. "Yes. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing, may I ask in return?"

The man removed his top hat and bowed to her deeply. Every one of his movements was a thesis in grace.

"My name is Mr. Saturday, and I deeply regret to inform you that you are dead."

Scarlett was shocked. "Dead?"

"Dead as a doornail!" one of the others crowed.

"That's impossible. This must be a dream."

"It's no dream," Saturday replied with a voice like chocolate and honey. "You've been ill for a long time. Your memory will return in time."

The air was so hot and clammy that she shivered again. She longed to be inside, fanned by a servant girl, with an iced tea in her hand.

One of the fops cackled, "Ain't she just the prettiest _alouette_? I'll bet my big nigger dick would crack her in half!"

"Her cunt probably tastes like _tarte aux fraises_," said another.

They all laughed uproariously, including Mr. Saturday. Scarlett blanched and clutched the hem of her skirt. Not only had she _never_ been addressed like that in her life, she couldn't have imagined that such vile impudence was even _possible_. Saturday stopped laughing first, and smiled at her, without malice but also without pity.

"I apologize if my friends are a bit… boisterous for your tastes," he said.

"Aww, shucks, boss!"

Scarlett's throat was clenched so tightly she couldn't even talk.

"Now, to business.

"I'm afraid there's no way about it, Ms. O'Hara. You are quite dead. Not only that, but a certain… person… has made quite a convincing claim on your soul. I should think you don't want him to get his hands on it."

Scarlett finally got some words out.

"Lord Jesus oh please save me, I apologize for all my sins and I'd give anything for you Lord. Please please please…"

The Ghede laughed, and Mr. Saturday shook his head.

"I'm afraid you'll find my colleague's hands are tied in this matter, by the rules of your own religion. If you don't want Mr. Scratch to get his claws into you – and I do mean into you - I'm the one you have to bargain with."

Scarlett could feel the back of her yellow dress turning clingy with sweat.

"B-bargain?" Scarlett stuttered. "What do you want?"

Mr. Saturday stroked the pommel of his cane. "I like to consider myself a fair man, Ms. O'Hara. A righter of wrongs, an executor of justice. However, I happen consider the idea of justice offered by your religion to be a little… _disproportionate._ To that end, I've drawn up a contract for you to consider before I walk away and let the Big Bad Wolf take you.

"You owned slaves, Ms. O'Hara. I don't like that one bit. Whole lifetimes were wasted on your plantation; my brothers and sisters toiling under the hot sun and picking cotton under the threat of the whip. I've made some calculations. One hundred and six slaves, times nine years of moral accountability the way we reckon it – and that leaves you nine hundred and fifty four years of hard labor in our debt."

Wordless tears started falling down Scarlett's face.

"Let me have a crack at that tasty pussy!" demanded an enormously obese black woman wearing something that resembled the sail of a British manowar more than an actual dress.

"Shee-it," agreed another one of the Ghede. "I'll put her to hard labor right now, if ya know what I mean!"

He thrusted the air in front of him, and all the other Ghede broke into laughter and cries of agreement. Mr. Saturday shot them a tolerantly amused look before turning back to Scarlett and continuing his pitch.

"But justice becomes nothing more than tyranny if it isn't tempered by mercy. Mr. Scratch considers mercy a human affliction, like typhoid or cancer." Mr. Saturday smiled, and the whites of his teeth were stark against his dark lips. "Fortunately for you, I don't happen to share his opinion. So the terms of the contract are this; you come work for me on my pepper plantation for but one part in twenty of that time, leaving you forty seven point seven years of labor to repay your debt."

"As a slave?" Scarlett asked in a miniscule voice.

Mr. Saturday brought the tip of his cane heavily against the ground.

"Of course not as a slave!" He roared with flaring nostrils. "Haven't you listened to a word I said? I am not a slaver, Ms. Scarlett, and I never will be. If you accept my offer, you will be an _employee_ servicing a _debt_."

Scarlett sighed heavily. "What choice do I have?"

"I'll show you. I will withdraw my power for a fraction of a second."

The world exploded.

Scarlett had never imagined such agony in her entire life. It felt like the flesh was melting off her bones, but she couldn't even survey the damage because she could see nothing save an unmarred field of the hottest white. A high pitched noise filled her ears a deafening volume. Despite the fact that the buzz was loud enough to risk rupturing her eardrums, it continued to get louder and louder for what seemed like an eternity. Scarlett's felt bitter, shit-covered maggots crawling all over the flesh of her tongue, but she was unable to do anything to spit them out. The light stank. The light stank horrifically. It smelled like midden, rotting corpses, and vomit fermented into an incomprehensibly vile slurry. Scarlett was too dizzy to think.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, she was back in the bayou. She fell to her knees, gasping. With a wince of abject humiliation, Scarlett realized she had a thin trickle of piss running down her leg. Mr. Saturday looked down on her impassively.

"That was just his backside," the _lwa_ informed her. "If you had seen his face, even I could not have brought you back. So – I am not a slaver. You very much have a choice."

Scarlett had nothing in her belly, so all she was able to vomit was yellow bile.

"What happens… what happens if I fulfill your contact?" she asked when she could finally speak again.

"Aww, boss! Aren't you going to at least let us fuck her?"

To Scarlett's horror, the Ghede appeared to be throwing lots to determine in what order they'd make good on their perverse shouting.

"Then I'll grant you a writ of safe passage and the Stranger won't be able to get you. From there, you can head wherever you wish to go."

Mr. Saturday said she had a choice, but it was obvious that she didn't, really. Even if the man was lying about Satan's hold on her – and evidence suggested he wasn't – to repeat that most recent agony was more than she could imagine bearing. Even fifty years of hard toil was nothing in comparison to the horror of Beelzebub's Hell. Still, this was her one chance to challenge Saturday's terms before she gave in.

"How do I know I can trust you?"

Mr. Saturday snorted. "Ms. O'Hara, I _always_ keep my word."

His tone brooked no disbelief.

"It's a… pepper plantation?"

She knew from the bloodied fingers of her estate's slaves that picking cotton was grueling, painful, thorny work.

"Indeed. It's where the twenty one varieties of hot pepper used to make the finest rum are grown. The Scorpion, the Reaper, the Naga, the Ghost, and so on – but you'll find out all about that soon enough," Saturday answered with a pearlescent smile.

"I agree," she said quietly.

Mr. Saturday drew out a short contract, which she read carefully. He also handed her a small, exceptionally sharp silver spike. Forty seven point seven years of work on a hot pepper plantation, pulling ten hour days, seven days a week. Excluding high holy days like St. John's Eve, of course. Then Scarlett remembered the fires of Hell.

"Sign your name in blood, _s'il vous plaît_," he told her while she read.

Wincing, Scarlett jabbed the spike into her index finger. To her surprise, it didn't hurt at all, and soon a few drops of blood bubbled out of her skin. She closed her eyes and signed quickly. Mr. Saturday took the contract back with a smile.

Everything went perpendicular, and when Scarlett recovered her bearings she found herself in a vast subterranean cavern. It was just as hot and humid as the swamp, and her cotton dress clung to her skin with the ferocity a child afraid of being left behind by its parents. Mr. Saturday and his posse of depraved minions were nowhere to be seen, but a bearded, middle aged white man caught sight of her and waved her over. Knowing little else to do, she obeyed.

"I'm Scott, the foreman of this section. You must be a new employee," he said.

Scarlett nodded unwillingly. "Scarlett. O'Hara."

"I'll tell you what I tell all the new hires. It's not so bad once you get used to it. The work ain't easy, but it's routine, and you'll have a little room to yourself and some freedom when you're not in the fields. The Baron throws the holiest goddamn banquets I've ever seen on the holidays – pardon my French – and of course, there's always rum, and damn good rum at that. Just remember that you could have it a lot worse." Then he shook his head. "And don't try to escape, or the Baron will just let Old Nick take you."

Scarlett allowed her gaze to wander across the fields. They were vast, and stretched so far into the distance that she couldn't see the end of them. Row after row after row of pepper-bearing vines crawled along rickety trellises. Somewhere in the middle distance, she could see a white plantation mansion that must house whatever monstrous deity Mr. Saturday had overseeing the pepper fields whenever he was away. Above the ruddy, misty sky she could just barely make out the roof of the cavern. There was no visible sun and the illumination appeared to be coming from everywhere at once. The air was as hot, sticky, and thick as the most sweltering Georgia afternoon. She practically needed to chew before breathing.

She was surprised to note that not only were there numerous men, and also women, toiling in the fields, but blacks worked alongside whites as well. Scarlett wondered what they'd done to fall afoul of Saturday's ungentle mercy; obviously, his interests extended far beyond punishing slavers. The workers sang songs in French and in English, and filled wicker baskets full of peppers so fiery that they were almost glowing.

"Follow me, I'll get you settled."

Scarlett followed. Scott led her to a long, squat building with dozens of doors. There was a big water pump out front and some picnic tables and long wooden benches. Scott led her to a door near the end of the north wing, and opened it to reveal a small room with a sink, a cot, and a table.

"We're actually just a couple miles down the road from a town," Scott said. "After work, a lot of the people take carriages in to do all kinds of business. There are taverns; gambling halls; a library – even some new-fangled picture show called a cinema. Lots of things to keep a body entertained, once the work's done."

Suddenly, Scarlett broke down into tears. Scott just put his arm around her and she was too absorbed in her own misery to even protest. The man let her cry herself out, and hot tears fell upon the even hotter wood slats that served as the floor of her new room.

[AUTHOR:] I'm sorry you guys. I'm really, really sorry. If it makes you feel any better, this _is_ pretty much how Baron Samedi and his cohort are said to behave in traditional Haïtian religion - because voodoo is way, way fucking cool.


End file.
